How To Buy The Appropriate Bathroom Fan

The establishment of proper ventilation systems in different spheres of a household is vital for the maintenance of air quality and the prevention of development of a habitat for microorganisms harmful to your health. The lack of ventilation in a bathroom is no different. If not dealt with accordingly, a poorly ventilated bathroom can turn into a breeding ground for fungus and other organisms lethal to your hygiene.

Now that it has been laid out in the open that every bathroom needs proper ventilation that comes in the form of a bathroom fan, it is imperative to walk you through some items on a checklist that you need to cross off before finally buying an exhaust fan.

What’s the size of the bathroom fan you need?

The sizing of fans is done in terms of air moved in CFM i.e. Cubic Feet Per Minute. In lay man’s terms, the larger the bathroom, the lesser the CFM value will be. Calculating the CFM is an easy ordeal even if you aren’t comfortable with math. Firstly, take a measure of the room’s volume in cubic metres. As a rule of thumb, the bathroom fan needs to filter out the moist air equivalent to the room’s volume every 7.5 minutes. Therefore, for obtaining the CFM value for the required fan, you simply need to divide the room’s volume by 7.5. For instance, a room with a volume of 750 cubic metres will require a fan with a CFM value of 750/7.5=100.

What are the features that bathroom fans in the market boast?

Exhaust fans double up as ceiling lights as well.
Intelligent bathroom fans can smartly detect humidity levels and operate in an automatic manner.
Some bathroom fans come equipped with timers that can determine their runtime. Simply put, some bathroom fans work like alarm clocks.

Do you really need a new bathroom fan?

Replacing an old exhaust fan in the bathroom is much simpler than completely performing a new installation. Furthermore, you might even make the best out of the situation by going for a repair when you’re dealing with a faulty bathroom fan. A new installation requires routing of the duct pipe connected with the fan, and also needs electrical connections to be figured out.

Moreover, you can even consider changing the position of your current exhaust fan so that it is placed as close to the shower as possible. Being in the vicinity of the show enables the bathroom fan to filter out moisture quite efficiently.

What do you need to take care of while using bathroom fans?

A leakage in the duct pipe filtering out the moist air out of your bathroom is a bleak possibility, but it is a possibility still. However, you can prevent that from happening by not using the fan any more than you require. That will also lead to savings in the electricity bill.
Using the exhaust fan for longer than it’s needed does more harm than gain. Similarly, not even using the bathroom fan for as longer as it is required defeats the whole purpose of having one. On an average, it takes about 18 minutes after a long shower for an exhaust fan to do it’s job.

By keeping the above information in mind, you won’t even manage to equip your bathroom with proper ventilation, but you’d equip yourself with the means to make the most out of your bathroom fan.